


over hill and dale, under sea and storm

by gayforroxane



Series: under sea and storm, through bullets and blood [2]
Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: AU - Soulmates, Gen, M/M, canon divergence - meet cute, jellybean jones is not a child shes MY child you can fight me on this, look guys i dont have to tag something with 'murder husbands' aren't you proud, reggie isnt an asshole but hes brief im sorry, self conscious archie, which is my weakness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-18
Updated: 2017-03-18
Packaged: 2018-10-07 07:45:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10355535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gayforroxane/pseuds/gayforroxane
Summary: Veronica’s eyes have held his, unyielding. With one light, grey/blue/green eye and one dark, savoury-chocolate-and-mud-after-rain eye, he knows they’re a little odd, a little clashing, a little uncomfortable.ORthat one soulmate AU where everyone has heterochromia and their eyes match their soulmate's but with Jughead and Archie because obviously





	

**Author's Note:**

> ah, soulmates. 
> 
> okay, no warnings/triggers are you proud of me yet? 
> 
> aaaalso this was beta-ed by the wonderful and talented angeburger (usagi) who some of you may know from the blood and guts and guns series that we're doing together they're great you should check out their writing :)

They migrate to Riverdale (the town of Pep!) on his sixteenth birthday, and her fifteenth. Exactly a year apart, their mother always called them her Not-Twin Twins, which he always thought was clever as a child. Now, though, he’s not sure.

They don’t move out of desire, but out of survival.  

His mother (abducted by aliens, he and his sister tell curious strangers): physically gone, his father: mentally, emotionally. 

He wishes a lack of physicality upon his father's alcohol/cocaine/heroine/whatever-else-he-decided-to-take-that-particular-day-ridden body, because the hits can’t hurt if they can’t land.  

Pop's Chock-Lit Shop plays bouncing 1940s swing the Friday they arrive and he smiles as he his throws himself into a booth. His sister flaunts up to the counter and leans over, striking a match on conversation with a tiny, cat-like, middle-aged woman in a uniform. In moments, they're both grinning. 

Watching the door, he taps his fingers across the table. He ducks to dig in his rucksack, seizing a sticker-bathed laptop, his wallet, and when he comes up there are three people his age walking in. The first is tall and blonde, conservative in her pants and blouse/sweater combo, casual in her smile. He smiles lightly when he sees her. The second has a flood of dark, shiny hair, spilling over the riverbed into the field to her right. Her smile is sharper than the blonde's, cut and pasted with dark lipstick. The two of them fuzz at the edges like couples do. Chinking puzzle pieces that have found at least a part of themselves.

The last is a boy in a startling gold-and-blue letterman jacket, billowing out at the sides, obscuring his shape. His red hair practically glows in the red neon light of the diner.

At the table, the boy's lip curls. It's a sneer, and a smile caught between flirtatious and cautious. 

The boy has a strong lined jaw, heavy eyebrows, a soft mouth, high cheekbones. A scar sits at his third eye. Even with the bulk of the jacket, the white of his t-shirt modestly represents the cut-and-dried body beneath, and the boy smirks to himself.

His fingers tap against the laptop in front of him, cheeks pink. 

"Just our usual," The dark-haired girl says, with an elegant smile, an air of command, as she sits down at a booth near his, the redhead in front of her and the blonde beside.

He can hear her quote Ray Bradbury in the space between his ears, even as he searches through his files for his latest project. 

"Who is that?" The blonde asks, leaning in close, falling into her space easily. "Talking to your mom?" 

The elegant girl frowns, turning slightly, tracing her eyes down his sister’s figure as she raises an eyebrow and swings out of the booth.

“Let’s find out, shall we?” 

Popping against the keys of his laptop, he casts a quick look at his sister against the back drop of the diner. 

In the old music and tables and leather and food, she’s futuristic. A science-fiction movie among tales from the Old West, where the only kind of beauty that really matter is the one that she carries in her footsteps and her voice, her laugh. It’s a confidence he’s always felt, but has never been able to manifest, to force it into his presence as she can.

He admires her for it.

In her grey tee-shirt dress that barely falls past her ass (he makes fun of this dress often, mostly because of its length – it makes her look like a slutty sock), her lacey, white thigh-highs with her red chucks, she looks like something other-worldly. With the sea of pink hair that arcs down her back, with her mouth painted… is it silver today? Or mint green? Maybe fuchsia? He can’t keep track of her lipstick choices, though he’s mastered everything else about her. Whatever the colour of her mouth, her eyes are enough to attract attention, wringed in winged eyeliner as they are, a big, bold blockbuster, ready to be viewed by millions.

Her and the elegant girl look like mirrors of each other that stand side by side, almost alike but not quite. Drawn together like magnets of opposite attraction, repulsed, but intrigued, they’re a careful dance. It makes him want to thank them, to express his bone-deep gratitude even though they’ve done nothing for him.

"Hi mom," the girl says, smiling at the waitress, before turning to his sister. 

"New to town?" She asks, casually, the distance constructed by the kind of person who does small talk like she does her nails – precisely, perfectly. 

His sister smiles. "Yeah." She nods at his booth, at his denim jacket with the wool collar, the red and black flannel, the combat boots, at the crown-like beanie that perches on his head. "That's my big brother." 

He meets the girl’s gaze, gives her a tiny smirk. He can't bring surprise to his system, at her matching eyes. Both dark brown, though he has no doubt the left used to match the blonde's exactly. They have the feel, the ease of soulmates. She gives a slightly startled smile in return.

“I’m Veronica Lodge,” She says, looking between them both.

“Jellybean Jones,” His sister nods, shaking her hand. “That’s my brother, Jughead.”

“Jughead and Jellybean Jones?” The waitress asks, a laugh on her tongue.

“Both the III, and technically it’s—” Jughead hops out of his booth and hip checks his sister lightly, cutting her off.

“Technically it’s incredibly embarrassing and we won’t be talking about our real names, right, Jellybean?”

He can feel her grin, her rolled eyes. “Whatever you say, Jug.”

Veronica’s eyes have held his, unyielding. With one light, grey/blue/green eye and one dark, savoury-chocolate-and-mud-after-rain eye, he knows they’re a little odd, a little clashing, a little uncomfortable. Tragedy (and too-interested strangers) usually strike his sister’s eyes, not his. She has one eye like this, light against her pupil, but the other is light, light, light, nearly  _ white _ grey. The colour means a dead soulmate, a lost chance, a ‘life without hope’ as one very sympathetic (and earnest) middle-aged woman had said a few days before. She receives sorrow, empathy, awkwardness, despite having never  _ met _ her soulmate.

Usually, people are subtler.

Usually, they’re quieter.

Veronica Lodge, he’s unsurprised to find, are neither and both, simultaneously.

He’s just not used to people being so honest in their study.

Pulled out of his reverie by Jellybean squeezing his arm and navigating across his field of vision, plopping herself into the booth next to the redhead, giving him a grin and a hand.

“ _ This _ ,” Veronica says with a tucked-in smile as she slips down next to the very next-door-neighbour blonde, “Is Jellybean Jones, sister of Jughead Jones, both new to Riverdale.”

At the mention of his name, Jughead squishes in next to his sister, forcing her closer to the redhead.

“I’m Archie,” he says, giving her a freckled hand and frowning eyebrows with a smiling mouth. He leans around Jellybean to look at her brother, face going a little pinker under the bright lights, chewing on his lower lip.  _ That _ , Jughead decides, as his eyes flit to his mouth,  _ is incredibly distracting _ .

“Jughead,” he mutters absently, giving Veronica’s mom a lazy smile as she sets two burgers and a plate of fries between him and his sister. “Thank you, Ms. Lodge.” He tips an imaginary hat, and listens to the blonde giggle.

“Betty Cooper,” she says by way of explanation, stretching out to steal a fry, slipping it into her mouth with raised eyebrows.

He squawks. “You’re a heathen is what you are! Paws  _ off _ , Ms. Cooper.”

Jellybean snorts, shoving him with one elbow. “You absolute drama queen, she’s  _ hungry _ .”

“So am I!” He meets her eyes across the table, winking his light eye closed. She stares for a moment, before glancing at Archie. Veronica nudges her and coughs.

“Bets isn’t the only one,” Archie says, looping her arm over Jellybean’s shoulders and snatching another fry off from his dwindling pile. Jellybean gasps in mock horror, throwing a palm over her mouth.

“How could you? Juggie’s never going to survive with only—”

“Hang on,” Archie says, “ _ Juggie _ ?”

“Oh, don’t start with me, you  _ thief _ ,” Jughead snaps primly, deftly outmanoeuvering his sister as she tries to get a hand on his burger, because she doesn’t like pickles on  _ her _ burgers, but she likes them on his. He slaps Archie’s hand when he goes for the milkshake. “Twice? You’re going mess with me twice, Archie-whatever-the-fuck-your-last-name-is?”

Archie gives him an unimpressed stare, meeting his eyes, trying to reign in a smile. “It’s Andrews, and—” He gives a Jughead a slow, once-over, gaze hot, “—You’re gonna fight me,  _ Juggie _ ?”

It’s at that moment that Jughead feels it, feels it soak into him like hot sun in the wake of cold weeks. His left eye itches, ache, burns, before it settles into uncomfortably warm. Heart pounding in his throat and wrists and fingertips, he holds his gaze on eyes that mirror his own – one blue, one brown. He watches across his sister as Archie’s eyes bleed brown, the blue fading, and if he thinks hard enough he can feel the blue and brown fading into and out of their eyes in tandem, like the rise and fall of a ship on the sea.

“Oh,” Jellybean says softly, staring at her brother, mouth open, gaze gentle, because she knows.

She knows that the two of them have joked for years that biology must have fucked up somewhere, gotten them mixed up, because Jughead has no interest in having a soulmate.

She knows that this is a lie they’ve used, because Jughead is has fear in his bone marrow, in his spinal cord, in his fingernail beds and uncarved neuro-pathways. He will never deserve he’s enough. For once in her fifteen years, she feels an icy quarrel in her teeth, a hatred for her father for turning her brother into  _ this _ ; into a beautiful, genius boy who can’t tell his left from his rights, and loves so deeply it scars.

It’s an ache in her gut, because he might run. Running is easier than facing a shy, gorgeous redheaded boy who wears a letterman jacket and an open grin like armour. Fingers curl into the denim sleeve of his jacket as his body tenses to stand.

“Don’t, Jug, please,” She says, voice firm, gentle.  

Archie stares at him, open-mouthed, cheeks flushed. A beautiful boy with pale skin and light eyes and a pink mouth is his soulmate and how wonderful had he been in a previous life to deserve someone like this? He blinks, and the boy - Jughead - is half out of his seat, eyes wide, the whites too white and the pupils dilated. A deer in headlights, a wolf in a corner, a fox in a buried den, the boy is going to run. 

Hurt sinks across the front of his breast bone and his cheeks flush for a new reason and he ducks his head, closing his eyes, just for a second, just long enough for thoughts to scamper across his mind, lost kittens in a flood. 

_ He doesn’t want you, you’re not enough _

He shudders a breath out his mouth and looks up at the boy again, giving him a tiny smile despite himself. It cracks across his face as hopeless as thunder to lightning, because this boy is still beautiful, even if he doesn’t think he could ever learn to love him. That’s okay, he supposes. It can’t be the first time it’s happened, the first time a soulmatch has been a glitch in the biological system, but it still has his gut shaking. 

“Jughead if you don’t sit down and talk to him, I’m gonna break your nose,” A voice snaps, and Archie refuses to look at Betty and Veronica, both reaching for his hands across the table. 

“Jellybean, if he doesn’t want to stay, he doesn’t have to,” He murmurs, ignoring the sharp jab of Veronica’s stiletto in his calf, Betty’s pinch on his arm, studying the cuffs of his jacket. 

Jellybean stares. 

“For fuck’s sake, you absolute martyrs, you’re soulmates, and he’s  _ alive _ , get your heads out of your asses before I--”

She’s cut off by a boy in a letterman jacket bumps into her, shoved by one of his friends. 

Her silver smile (it  _ was _ silver, today, Jughead thinks absently) goes sour as she turns around to see who pushed her, tense words across the tip of her tongue, her teeth, her lips. 

“Oh, shit, sorry, uh,” He says, pausing, staring as he looks down down down at the tiny girl standing in front of him. She looks up up up at the letterman jacket that towers over her, eyes flicking over a big grin and wide eyes - one brown, one light grey, nearly white. She starts, because she’s never met another someone, well, actually, another  _ young _ someone with a broken eye, a lost love. 

The words die on her tongue, cast back into her esophagus. 

“Jellybean,” She says with a smile, holding out her hand. He shakes it tentatively, flashing a look over her shoulder at Archie, still huddled in the back of the booth. 

“Reggie, uh, Reggie Mantle.” He frowns at Archie, still holding her hand. “You good, Andrews?” 

“Reggie,” Veronica says, standing up, pulling Betty with her. “How about the six of us go and find a booth, hmm? Have a triple date?” Without waiting for a response, she pulls Reggie and Betty along, trusting Jellybean and Chuck and Moose to follow her, like trailing after a queen. 

They settle into a table three down from their own, and soon, conversation spreads over them, wildfire in dry woods. 

“Look,” Archie says, and clears his throat when his voice cracks, “I get it, if you, uh, if you want to leave.” The last word comes on an exhale, shaky, drawn. 

Jughead stares at him, silent, before slowly sinking onto the very edge of the red leather seat next to him. He’s poised, ready to run. 

Archie stares, a frown etching over his features, and Jughead has to resist the urge to run his palm down his face to try and wipe it away, erase it from a face made for grins. He wonders if his skin is warm, if the callouses on the ends of his fingers are from guitar or bass or cello or violin. 

How does he like his burgers? 

Tea or coffee?

Rugby or football?

Does he lose his softness in bed? (Jughead’s cheeks flush and he looks away, stunned at himself for the possibility). 

It occurs to him that if he stays, if he makes a conscious effort not to run, to move closer in a creaking booth, hold his hand and kiss him if he’s allowed, he might learn these things. The privilege of learning about him is one that Jughead actually has and the thought brings an untempered grin to his face. 

Archie stares, mouth open, hands reaching out of his volition. They freeze across the table, tan, wide, dirty nearly reaching, soft, thin, pale. 

Time slips through molasses and honey, sweet and slow. 

Jughead reaches out his hand. 

 

**Author's Note:**

> yayy, look a fic.  
> okay, now i have to go work with Usagi on our dark!jarchie series, but i needed to relieve myself from the angst and the blood as fun as that it. 
> 
> anyways  
> if you wanna talk/rant/giggle/i dont even know you can hmu in the comments or on tumblr at blue-by-auster 
> 
> have a wonderful day lovelies :)  
> xx  
> mads

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [she's a brick and i'm drowning slowly](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10360617) by [nosecoffee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nosecoffee/pseuds/nosecoffee)




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